If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Enjoy an ad free experience by logging in. Not a member yet? Register.

Windows 8, they joking right ?

OK, up front, I admit it , I hate change , I am still getting over unity/gnome-shell in linux (now on xfce) BUT at least they are consistent with that monstrosity.

Windows 8 is like 2 OS's living in the same hut & neither much like the other one much but play together cos daddy makes them.

Metro is interesting and cool for a phone or a tablet for personal/social stuff but a productivity platform it ain't.

So to do anything else you have to switch to Desktop mode where as per usual they removed or moved the things you used most , so its windows 7 , only broken.
.... why no start button ? what muppet thought that one up? seriously ? whats the gain ? ... nothing, whats the pain .. squillions of confused users.
I have not tried dual screen yet since only in my VM but I can imagine the hot-corners are going to be a PITA on dual 27's ...

In Advance YES I know this is not final release but its more like an unfinished side-project than a final release.
No I wont be using it anyway but my clients will, and sooner or later I am gonna have to come up with something nice to say about it because I sell computers, and when they pull the plug on 7 I have to start making things up .. lest they go buy a mac

funniest thing is that (as a linux advocate) this would have been the perfect launchpad for ubuntu/mint/$flavour if of course it were not for gnome-shell/unity, Ubuntu 10.10 vs Windows 8 ? I could have sold that

well played enough now to be sure I hate it , it is quite fast for sure but thats about it, installed photoshop on it since thats the only reason I ever use windows (me not a gamer) and runs nice and crisp even in VM with 2 and a bit GB + 2 cores.

but its still stupid.

and I know the metro interface looks cool on page one... but the metro-style components and dialogs that you get when in desktop mode just look childish when on the real desktop, like your five year old just started playing with MSPaint or something

How do you access your programs? Just through shortcuts or something??

Nah. just left click in the bottom left corner of the screen and it will bring up the metro start screen where you can add all your prefered shortcuts for programs. And if you want to access other programs you just right click somewhere on the screen and choose "all apps".

Actually I don't really miss the start menu that much when you get used to the shortcuts available in windows 8. Though I can't really say that I've found many improvements compared to windows 7. But after a while you get kind of used to the new interface.

Though I would prefer to have an option for using the usual start button. I mean, since windows 8 really is nothing more than a windows 7 addon it wouldn't be that hard to leave an option for having the start button.

And I really feel sorry for all guys like Firepages who will need to help thousands of confused users who are upset because they can't even figure out how to shut off the computer in Windows 8. Because there sure will be a lot of people having problems with this OS.

Mind me asking how? - I tried it in VMWare and the installer just kept rebooting

Admittedly it's an older version of VMW but even so, as long as it provides a virtual disk I wouldn't have thought it would matter really. What did you use?

I've not heard a lot of good about W8 myself. It seems that M$ have a two OS cycle where they release a good, bad, good, bad etc. To prove that..:

Win95: Good
Win98 (inc Win98SE): Bad
WinMe: Good IMO but the rest of the world said bad even though it crashed less than 98
WinXP: Good
Vista: Bad
Win7: Good
Win8: Logical conclusion? - Bad - Hold out for Win9 instead

I personally like Win7 a lot however for sheer wonderfulness you just can't beat XP. Not only was XP pro rock solid, XP home is also very stable too - I have it on my netbook and rarely bother to restart it but just hibernate it. What I would say about Win7 is that I like the newer version of the task manager which lets you see more and do more and despite being Win7 HP, like XP home it also has a system service controller so that I can install my custom services that I create rather than trying to run hidden programs in the background like on Me / 98. The day MS introduced system services on a home OS was a very happy one for me

Mind me asking how? - I tried it in VMWare and the installer just kept rebooting

actually using VirtualBox on xubuntu, I have ignored VirtualBox for ages because it used to be useless, e.g. no USB support etc, but thought I would give it a try since I am sick and tired of VMware changing editions/licensing etc every other day + you often have to patch it to get it to work on the latest Linux kernels ...

sooooo since VirtualBox (now Oracle-VirtualBox ) was available as a prebuilt debian package I gave it a go and .. wow a million times better than before, USB works , far easier to understand virtual network options, windows 8 ready (its in the list of 'what are you going to install') and so far so very good, though I did like the Unity feature in VMware so you could bring your windows programs to your Linux desktop, as far as I can tell thats not in the options

install was fast and easy (installed from ISO image) and all good until I get into windows8 itself ~ it runs very well, just really not liking it as noted above.

Windows 7 is good yes, seriously they should have split 8 as a tablet/phone edition or similar.... XP was cool but better hardware support in W7 so using that for anything windows related I have to do, and yes waiting for W9 now as well

actually IE10 is quite cool, not that I gonna start using it but did quite like the feel of it.

Windows 7 is good yes, seriously they should have split 8 as a tablet/phone edition or similar...

That would actually be a really good idea I think. Or at least the best choice they could have made. Because it's quite obvious that the metro style start menu etc is only created with touch devices in mind. And even though microsoft has said that they believe in a very big increase of PCs with touch screens the majority of computers will still run standard screens for quite many years. Especially when keeping in mind that the mots common screen resolutions are 1024x768 and 1280x800...

.... though I did like the Unity feature in VMware so you could bring your windows programs to your Linux desktop, as far as I can tell thats not in the options

aha wrong , it is , its called `seamless mode` , a bad example here ..

bad cos at this point cant seem to find the hotspots in the VM in seamless mode

Originally Posted by jimutt

That would actually be a really good idea I think. Or at least the best choice they could have made. Because it's quite obvious that the metro style start menu etc is only created with touch devices in mind. And even though microsoft has said that they believe in a very big increase of PCs with touch screens the majority of computers will still run standard screens for quite many years. Especially when keeping in mind that the mots common screen resolutions are 1024x768 and 1280x800...

absolut, I mean 90% of windows users are not gonna be on touchscreens, corporate desktops etc... mad